The Pot Thief Who Studied Ptolemy [02] by J. Michael Orenduff Read Free Book Online

Spanish.”
    “Why?”
    “Because they say the Spanish stole the first set from them. They crafted a replacement set. That set was stolen by a governor when this area was part of Mexico. They made another set after that.”
    “Then what?”
    “Then the Mexican-American War resulted in New Mexico becoming a U.S. territory. Fearing they were going to be robbed once again, they crafted a duplicate set – that’s why I said there were two sets – and they put both sets in the kiva , the new pots in plain sight and the old set hidden. In case the Americans came to steal pots, the Ma hoped they would take the new ones and not know the difference.”
    I thought how my own copies had fooled people over the years and felt a sudden kinship with the Ma. “Did it work?”
    “Yes and no. I’ll tell you what I already knew and what Sema told me. First, what I know. The new American administration wasn’t interested in stealing pots, so we’ll never know if the Ma plan would have worked. What the new administration was interested in was reorganizing the territory. They had surveys made of the pueblos. There had never been surveys before. Both the Spaniards and the Mexicans took whatever land they needed, but other than that, they went along with the informal boundaries recognized by the tribes. The stated purpose of the surveys was for official record-keeping, but some of the pueblos complained they ended up smaller after the survey.”
    “Why am I not surprised?”
    “What Sema told me is they lost their kiva to the Americans. I suppose it fell outside the lines of the new survey.”
    “How could that be? The kiva is in the middle of the village.”
    Masoir shook his head. “At some point in the distant past, they had moved their dwelling area a few miles to the south. As you know, many of the pueblo tribes have done this over the years, sometimes to better defend themselves from the raids of the nomadic tribes, sometimes for superstitious reasons. Anyway, they moved, but they continued to use the primary kiva for ceremonies even though it was no longer in the center of the village. The American survey left the kiva outside their land. When they went to the lost kiva to take the pots and other sacred objects back to their village, they found the kiva had been emptied. All the copies were gone, but some of the originals were hidden well enough not to be found. The Ma still have eight of them.”
    “How many were taken?”
    “Five. Each set contained thirteen pots, one for each lunar month of the year, each bearing a design appropriate to that month.”
    “So they’re missing eighteen pots.”
    “Yes, but it’s only the five originals they want back. For some reason, they consider those pots to carry the same magic as the very first ones.”
    “And the copies lack magic?”
    He nodded.
    “Did he tell you what the thirteen designs are?”
    “No, but he gave me one example. The pot for the tenth lunar month has a corn design because it’s the month of the harvest.”
    “No other examples?”
    “No. I know it would have been helpful for you to have a complete description of the entire set, but he didn’t offer, and it would have been inappropriate to ask.”
    I didn’t want to question Masoir’s judgment. After all, he was to my knowledge the only white man who had ever lived among the Ma.
    I asked him why he’d never seen the pots while they were in the University’s possession.
    “They were a late addition to the collection, acquired only a year or so before I left. Gerstner kept them under lock and key because he said it would insult the Indians to have white men studying them. I was surprised he accepted the collection, but in retrospect, I think he did so to further his repatriation scheme. The provenance of those pots was shaky to say the least, so everyone wanted to return them to the Ma, myself included. And once you decide that, why not do the same for the other tribes? I explained why not, but to no